The issue is whether a post-answer default judgment may establish damages in a Stowers action an insured assigned to wrongful-death plaintiffs. In essence, the argument is whether a conflict exists between Evanston Insurance v. ATOFINA, holding that an insurer may not challenge a settlement's reasonableness when the insurer refuses a defense or coverage, and State Farm Fire and Casualty v. Gandy's reasoning that an insured's valid damages evidence must result from a fully adversarial proceeding. In the underlying wrongful-death trial, the defendant drilling company, Diatom, answered Seger's lawsuit but lost a $15-million default judgment after not appearing for trial. The company's insurers had refused to defend or settle despite offers to settle within policy limits. On the Stowers claim, the appeals court reversed the trial court's judgment for Seger, holding that the judgment was not good evidence of damages because it did not result from a fully adversarial trial.

The issue is whether limitations to recover from general partners a partnership's judgment debt begin when the debt judgment was entered or when the underlying contract-breach action accrued. In 1993 American Star sued S&J Investments, the partnership, for breach of an operating agreement. American Star won a judgment in 2007 for almost $230,000, which was final in 2009. When partnership assets failed to satisfy the judgment, American Star sued Stowers and other general partners in 2010 to confirm their liability. The trial court granted summary judgment for the partners, ruling that the suit against the partners on the debt was brought too late because that suit accrued at the same time as the breach-of-contract claim against the partnership. In a split decision, the appeals court affirmed.

The issue is whether named plaintiffs adequately represent a proposed landowners class in a riverbed-boundary dispute with the state General Land Office when the class would include landowners who settled with the state over the boundary and mineral rights resulting from it. A subsidiary question is whether the state, by its agreement with landowners after the class suit was filed, created a conflict with named plaintiffs. In this case the named plaintiffs, landowners along the Canadian River eastward from Lake Meredith in the Texas Panhandle, lost their effort to certify a class alleging the state took mineral rights when it established new river boundaries for the Canadian below the dam that created the lake. The state argues that the named plaintiffs do not adequately represent the putative class because many landowners along the river in the putative class settled with the state on their mineral rights based on a 1981 survey that fixed the river's streambed width. The appeals court affirmed the trial court's class-certification denial.